Monday, January 13, 2014

Magic 2014

I saw that Magic 2014 was on sale during the Steam holiday event and that it had Steam cards. I'd heard good things about the game series though I didn't know anything about it except it was based on Magic the Gathering in some way. It hit pretty much all of my game splurge buying criteria so I picked it up. It made it to the top of the heap of things to try, actually, and I played it some last week.

You basically start off by playing a theme deck. They don't seem to be the actual M14 theme decks, but the idea is pretty similar. Win a game against the computer to add a new card to your deck. The cards that get added seem to be predetermined and aren't more basic lands so you need to go in and edit your deck every couple of wins or you end up with a land light deck. But it does give the feeling of having a game plan in mind and then getting to refine it as you play the deck more and more.

You can also play sealed deck where it opens you some random packs and you build a deck. Win a game or two and you get to open another pack to add it to your sealed deck. I don't know if the cards are fixed across computers or not but the cards I opened were pretty sweet. I had 2 time warps, a tutor, 2 guys who let you regrow a spell, and 2 gravediggers. I didn't have any big creatures but I kept winning by getting a couple 2/2s into play and then just taking 3 or 4 turns in a row and slowly whittling my opponent down. Fun times! And it gives people a taste of what it can feel like to crack open a booster pack...

On top of that there are some challenges where you need to figure out how to win from a given board position like the old puzzles from Skrye magazine. All but the last one were what I'd call trivial but I have a bit of experience with Magic board positions. I liked that it existed in the game.

Every now and then the game would basically spam me to give Wizards more money. But they didn't do it the way most games do by offering in game items or by blocking my ability to play... Instead they were advertising Friday Night Magic events. Links to webpages to search for nearby stores, that sort of thing.

All in all Magic 2014 seemed like a pretty good way to try to get people to start playing Magic. I had fun with it for a couple days but it was really very easy for an experienced Magic player. I'm glad I bought it and I think it's a good game for Wizards to have existing because I'm sure it will get at least some video game players to start playing paper Magic.